


With a bite

by meinposhbastard



Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Alpha!Wade, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Lawyers, Alternate Universe - Space, Alternate Universe - Space Opera, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, frenemies to lovers, mentions of torture (not between main), no Mpreg or mentions of it, omega!Peter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-08-07 10:45:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16406981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meinposhbastard/pseuds/meinposhbastard
Summary: They’ve been doing this for three years, playing this game on the court floor and outside of it, but things come to a halt when Wade confesses and Peter is forced to take a closer look at their relationship.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [Noir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pineau_noir/pseuds/Pineau_noir) for beta reading this one, too! :3
> 
> Y'all, I've been wanting to do a Lawyer!AU since 2014, but not being confident in my writing skills kept me away from it. Not anymore.
> 
> I’m placing them in the same space as my previous "What Wicked Webs We un-Weave", meaning that the Biollante Pentagon will make its appearance, as well as Nova York and the other names I shamelessly made use of in that fic.  
> Apart from some basic lawyer lingo, everything else (laws and everything within and around the court\trial) is made up to fit with the story. 
> 
> Also, the Peter I always have in mind when I write is Andrew Garfield, but I understand the Tom Holland hype (because he adorbs okay!), which is why I chose to not go into describing or using any kind of facial descriptions such as color of eyes and hair (or lack of it). You an' me both know these two idiots, so if you wanna go Holland or Garfield on this, I ain't gonna stop ya XD
> 
> To finish, the Harry in this is the one from the Andrew Garfield movies.

**—** **Part I —**

The holo-files do a poor job at obstructing the person on the other side of the high tech glass table, only because they’re few. So few, in fact, that he skims through the two pages in under a minute.

“You don’t expect me to make a case based on this, do you?”

The wobbly, crazy smile makes Peter’s eye twitch, unused to how much his best friend changed over the years. They used to play in the backyard of his sumptuous manor back on Prima Quo, terrorize native frog-like creatures in the lake, for crying out loud! Now he looks like a wrong move and he’d jump over the table to snap his neck. Or bite his head off.

The crazed glint in his eyes is anything but good.

“No. You’ll have to agree to be my lawyer first to see the rest.”

Peter stares. He’s trying to make him feel uncomfortable, the way he saw Alphas do with other Alphas, but Harry stares right back at him, unblinking. Okay,  _ he  _ is decisively uncomfortable now.

“What happened to you?”

“Not your concern.”

He cocks an eyebrow. “As your best friend, I doubt that.”

Harry’s smile dissolves into something that makes Peter’s skin crawl because it  looks  _ so  _ friendly.

“We haven’t seen each other in years, Pete.”

“So what? Now the status of best friend has an expiration date?”

“In my world, yes.”

“I’m not your business associate or client, Harry!” And he just managed to fix his hair before meeting Harry; now it’s all for naught as his hand goes through it, in a gesture he can’t suppress in time.

“You will be as soon as you sign the papers.”

Peter’s eyes fall on the two holo-pages now placed side by side on the glass table. Then he looks at Harry Osborn.

“I can’t do that with this little information.”

“You’ll get all the information you need after you sign the papers.”

But Peter’s shaking his head even before Harry finishes his sentence, both hands splayed on the edge of the table.

“I don’t know what I’m getting into, I don’t sign anything.”

“Trust me, then. Isn’t that what best friends do?”

Peter blinks. “We’re done.” He gets up, but before he manages to turn around, Harry catches his wrist, lightning-fast over the table.

Peter shivers. Harry’s hand is cold and sweaty and it encloses his wrist, hard.

“ _ Sign  _ the papers!” There’s a raspy quality to his words as he pronounces them which weirds Peter out even more.

He might have accepted Harry’s slightly— definitely more than slightly deranged look, the permanent smile on his face, like a jagged knife wound, bleeding madness instead of blood, but this is a bit too much even for Peter.

“Best friend or not, what you’re asking me to do is go in blind which, if I’m worth my salt as a lawyer, I’ll refrain from doing. So until you give me access to all the information, I won’t sign anything.”

The deranged smile doesn’t lessen in intensity, and seeing as Peter Parker, Omega, and one of the best lawyers Biollante Pentagon has ever seen, met him, Harry Osborn, Alpha and CEO of the Osborn Corp., without flinching, has his (former) best friend release his wrist, retreat behind his desk and put his expensive suit back in order.

Peter feels untethered for some reason. Must be because he has regrets regarding the gaping maw he feels he dredged between them by not calling Harry.

“I’m sorry I didn’t keep in touch with you.”

Harry chuckles, those slightly bulging eyes looking as if they’re already eating him up. Inviting, but deadly.

“I’m not. Made me see the world from another perspective. The way it is.”

Peter frowns, opens his mouth to say more, but the amused look on Harry’s face makes him shut it back. Considering how their first conversation in  _ years  _ went, anything he’ll say will be met with derrison, even indifference.

That hurts.

And since Peter has been raised to be an Omega that respects himself, he won’t show Harry more remorse than he already did.

“Goodbye, Harry.” For Peter, that marks the end of a relationship.

“See you around, Pete.”

He’s unable to shrug off the slimy and foreboding feeling no matter how much he tries to forget the meeting as the elevator goes down.

 

***

He unbuttons his navy blue suit jacket as he motions for Elizabeth Brant to precede him.

“Two minutes to the trial, you sure took your time,” an amused voice says from his right, and he doesn’t need to look to know how smug the man is.

Peter gave up believing a long time ago that there is anything in the universe that can stop this ridiculous, infuriating asshole from opening his mouth. That’s why he’s right there among the best lawyers this Pentagon has, and Peter’s the only one that stands between him and being the best of the best.

Not that Peter won’t continue being a hindrance to him till the day he dies.

Just as Wade Fucking Wilson won’t stop being his any time soon.

He takes his seat at his client’s side and takes out the documents he prepared, both evidence and his case, the old-fashioned way: expensive ink and paper. Among the files, one that has more ink on it than the others reminds him of how he prepared this case. Only one name on the list is crossed multiple times and then rewritten by a handwriting not his own and then canceled again by his own black ink pen— all to no avail.

Elizabeth Brant threatened to bail on him if he didn’t use the first witness in this trial.

Threatened him.

He’s the best lawyer she could get on such short notice  _ and pro bono. _ He filled his quota of  _ pro bono  _ cases this year and he could’ve brushed her off so easily. But he knows he can close this case in one sitting, he knows because he’s seen the evidence Elizabeth had with her— and because he can’t, for the life of him, refuse an Omega. Not an Omega who has been mistreated.

No matter how good the suppressants are, his Omega instinct cannot be that easily dulled. Which is why it’s easier for him to have Alpha and Beta clients, because Alpha are assholes in the courtroom, while Beta fall somewhere in-between civilized people and ravaging jerks.

J.J. Jameson fills that last category to burst.

He looks at Elizabeth, wishing she’d change her mind about her boss, but her gaze stays resolutely fixed on the vacant judge’s seat. Besides, the man is already there; he’d raise hell if Peter doesn’t call him to the stand.

“All raise for Judge Johnson,” the Bailiff calls out and they all do as Judge Mariah Johnson enters the courtroom. She motions for them to sit down after she takes her place.

The show is on.

After a couple more minutes, when the whole courtroom calms down, Peter takes a big breath and goes before the judge and the jurors.

“As you all know,” — Peter begins, warming himself up for what he has to say —  “even before we had to leave Earth, on account of destabilizing the ecosystem so badly that it became an inhabitable planet, our biology divided us into three groups: Alpha, Omega, and Beta.”

Now his attention and open body language is turned towards the jurors, but he makes the mistake of giving a cursory glance to his right and Wade’s smirk lengthens the pause between his opening and what he’s going to prepare the jurors for.

He clears his throat and takes two steps forward so that even if he looks to the right, he won’t see Wade unless he fully turns in that direction.

“We have laws put in place for each biological evolution, protecting them and their rights, because, after all, we deem ourselves to be a civilized society, don’t we? That is exactly why we are here on this remarkable day, Your Honor,” — he turns towards Judge Johnson — “distinct jurors,” — he nods at the two benches — “and esteemed audience.”

He bypasses Wade completely and instead concentrates on the people filling the courtroom at his back.

“Today we’re here because such laws have been transgressed—”

“Objection!”

Peter whirls around to take in a standing Wade who is keeping at bay the smile from his lips, but not from his eyes. Everybody’s attention, including the judge’s is on him.

“The prosecution is boring us to death, Your Honor!”

Sparse sniggers break the silence across the courtroom. Even Wade’s voice couldn’t quite keep the amusement under control.

“Sustained,” she says, her voice loud enough to be heard all the way to the furthest seat. “Mr. Parker, please do get to your point. We all have a life outside of this courtroom!”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

He turns back towards the jurors, a mixed group of men and women, from ethnicities lost when Earth was abandoned, people formerly from Asia, the Middle East, black, white, young and old, but all Beta. Twelve people waiting for Peter to convince them of the defendant’s guilt.

“My client, Ms. Elizabeth Brant, an Omega, has been abused by Doctor Otto Octavius, a renowned inventor and atomic research consultant— and an Omega just like my client.”

He pauses, gauging each and every juror’s expression and body language, seeing indifference but also surprise and disgust.

“Now, there aren’t many cases of Omega being cruel to other dynamics, it’s simply not in the DNA of one. We all know about the Margerie case or the Mates Till Death Do Us Part,” — he scrunches up his nose at the crude title the media gave that horrible case, but he smooths it over quickly; he needs to put distance between himself and the case — “where in both cases the Omega killed his partner or ended up committing a murder-suicide. Fortunately, for everybody involved here, my client managed to escape from the clutches of Doctor Octavius.”

He refuses to use the nickname the media gave him.

“And she brought evidence back with her. What I would like you to consider is this: do you really want such a deranged person roaming this galaxy free, choosing the next victims for his vile experiments?” He sees some slight shaking of heads in the second row. Good. “Thank you.”

He smirks at Wade as he returns to his seat, knowing that he had the jurors eating from his palm and ignoring the look of consideration the man is giving him.

Wade Wilson has never been good with appealing to the jurors’ emotions. He always dealt better with a Grand Jury where he only had to present the evidence and they’d make the best decision (obviously, the one he wanted them to make). Begrudgingly, Peter will admit that Wade’s always been better at putting together a case, especially if it’s a criminal one; even more so, if he’s on the ‘losing’ side of the line, and Peter uses that word very lightly when it comes to Wade.

The man is a force to behold once he gets even faulty evidence that could exempt his client from jail. He’d talk your ear off and muddle the information exposed until what he says sounds true. Criminal trials are something he succeeds in when he’s on the criminal’s side.

A trial case— it’s where Peter gets to shine. Appealing to people’s feelings, especially when his client is the victim, it’s what he thrives on. This is where the difference between a Trial Jury and a Grand Jury stands: the Trial Jury is present in the courtroom as the process goes on and it’s easy for Peter to talk his case, guided by what he sees on their faces. In the end, they’ll be the ones deciding if the defendant is guilty or not.

“As the prosecution said,” Wade begins, moving back and forth in front of the jury unlike Peter, “Otto Octavius is a renowned inventor and atomic research consultant. But what you probably don’t know is that Doctor Octavius’ work helped created the spaceship we all use to move from place to place. It’s thanks to his continuous work and sleepless nights that we now can travel so far without fearing for our lives. It’s his theories and then experiments that allow us to have excavators that help us in mining far-off planets for the minerals and other materials that are basic to our life on Nova York.”

He stops in front of them and Peter knows what happens next. It’s the move he always does before dealing a blow. His heartbeat accelerates, both exhilaration and dread, and he tightens his hold on the pen as he waits with bated breath for what Wilson’s brought to the court.

“Doctor Otto Octavius had no hand in the kidnapping or experimentation on Ms. Elizabeth Brant because he was away on Prima Quo the entire time Ms. Brant sustains she was held captive.”

Peter breaks his pen at the same time as Elizabeth shoots up, crying, ‘ _ lies! lies!’,  _ and the whole courtroom descends into erratic murmurs and a few callouts. Most of them are directed at Brant, calling her ‘ _ bitch’  _ and ‘ _ Bugle’s rodent’  _ and ‘ _ you just want your next scoop’.  _ Even if the rest of the shouting is directed towards Otto Octavius, calling him ‘ _ abuser’, _ ‘ _ Omega pervert’,  _ and ‘ _ scum of the galaxy’, _ he simply flips them off without turning around, which riles them up even more.

He has a hard time calming his client down, though; Judge Johnson hits the gavel and commands order in the room repeatedly. By the time silence returns, Wade’s back in his seat, throwing Peter a smug wink when their gazes meet.

“Mr.  _ Parker!” _

That’s definitely not a good sound because it means that he zoned out. He snaps to attention.

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“The prosecution may proceed with the evidence.”

He nods, looks down at the papers trying to recollect himself as he pushes away the broken pen. Elizabeth is still breathing heavily next to him, so he needs to give her time to collect herself. It doesn’t help the fact that anger and fear bleed through the suppressants she took, which only threaten to topple Peter’s inner balance if he stays near her for much longer.

“The prosecution calls our first witness, J.J. Jameson, to the stand," he announces, loud and clear, and the doors at his back open to admit the man in.

He steels himself for what’s to come, knowing that Jameson is the wildest card he’s ever had, so he needs to be careful how he plays it.

“Mr. Jameson,” — Peter looks him in the eye, even if they’re not at eye level — “please state your full name and job title.”

“Name’s John Jonah Jameson, chief editor at The Daily Bugle.”

Good. Could be better. He needs to work on skirting around that arrogant, tough attitude of his to gain the jury’s approval. Hard feat, but not impossible.

“And how long have you been working at the Bugle?”

“Eighteen years in a month from now.”

“And you’ve been chief editor—”

“Eight years,” Jameson jumps in, impatient as ever.

“So you might say that you have experience with this kind of thing?”

“Objection!” Wilson’s voice booms. “Vague, unrelated question.”

“Sustained.” She turns towards Peter. “Mr. Parker, rephrase your question.”

“Yes, Your Honor. Mr. Jameson, do you have experience with Omega that have been victims of abuse?”

“Son,” — and oh joy, if that doesn’t sound condescending —  “I know facts from shams.”

“Objection!” Wilson jumps again, and Peter just knows that he loves doing this. “Vague answer when the question requires a yes or no answer.”

“Sustained. Mr. Jameson, rephrase your answer.”

“Yes,” he simply say.

Wonderful. This is going to be an uphill road— if things don’t degenerate first. Jameson already gives the impression of a ticking bomb.

“And you were the first Ms. Brant contacted upon her escape, right?”

“Yes.”

“What did she tell you?”

“To come and pick her up at the location she gave me.”

“How did she sound over the call?”

This is the moment Jameson’s patience snaps.

“How do Omega sound when they’ve been experimented on and barely escaped with their life intact? Terrorized and crying.”

“I have no other questions.”

It’s a good ending point for him. The jurors now have more to sympathize with his side. He watches Wade stand up and approach the stand.

“You said that you were the first person Ms. Brant contacted, correct?”

“Yes.”

From that simple answer he’s already showing his hostility towards the defendant party. Peter sighs inconspicuously.

“Did she use an earpiece or did she text you?”

“Objection! Leading.”

“Sustained. Mr. Wilson, rephrase your question.”

“How did she contact you?”

“How can anyone contact anyone from a remote lab on a godforsaken base forgotten by the world? Obviously using a computer terminal from the lab she was prisoner in.”

“How can you be certain of that?”

“Because I had our IT guy trace back the call.”

“After you ended the call?”

“Of course.”

“How come you thought about doing that and not run to rescue Mr. Brant?”

“Objection! Unrelated, obvious question.”

“The question, Your Honor,” Wade says quickly, “serves a purpose, despite how obvious it sounds.”

She nods. “Overruled. Mr. Jameson, you can answer the question.”

Jameson grimaces. Well, he’s not winning any points with the jury as they all look either indifferent or unimpressed with him. Peter only hopes that he thinks about his employee and her reputation in all of this, if not at the public image the Bugle will get after this trial is over.

“I did ‘run to rescue Mr. Brant’, as you put it,” — he actually goes for the air quotes with his fingers; for someone’s sake, he’s going to ruin his own testimony, if he keeps being antagonistic — “but do you think I can’t do two things at once? They invented earpieces for a reason, did they not? As if I need to be physically present to have the IT guy do such a simple thing as retracing a call.”

“I have no other questions.”

Wade sports a little smirk as he returns to his seat, obviously directed at Peter even if he doesn’t make eye contact with him. The bastard played on Jameson’s less than desirable temper and arrogance. Even if the answers all sound in favor of Peter’s side, the attitude plays an important role here as there are twelve humans who will analyze and dissect the testimonies word by word once they’re done presenting the case.

He’s not going to jeopardize his case further.

He stands up. “The prosecution has no other questions.”

“Figures,” Jameson grumbles as he is escorted out of the room.

Peter draws in a deep breath and prepares himself for the next step.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asks Ms. Brant.

Her gaze is resolutely facing forward, but her fists are clenched over her knees.

“You don’t know what’s in there, what he told me, what he  _ did to me.”  _ Then, more quietly, “he deserves to die.”

“Okay, maybe refrain from stating that last part out loud. We need to play this right, if we want him to rot in jail.”

Her head whips around to look at him and he drowns in the fear boiling in her eyes, her pale face, the white line of her pursed lips.

“You don’t need to go far with this. Remember, you can always put a stop to it if it gets to be too much.”

She returns her gaze forward. “I’m ready.”

Peter sighs and stands up, which quiets down the murmurs that started during the small break.

“The prosecution calls our second witness to the stand, Ms. Elizabeth Brant.”

After she takes her seat, the judge making it clear that she can stop her testimony at any point she doesn’t feel safe or well anymore, Peter goes through the usual questions once again, slowly taking his client and the jury down to those days she’s been held a prisoner. She doesn’t cry, though by the time she finishes recounting the couple of days she was there, her voice shakes and she has to stop and take a sip of water to calm herself down.

Perfect. That’s what the jury needs. Emotions that only traumatized victims can evoke.

He finishes the first round, leaving the floor to Wade, who doesn’t jump right into it like he did with Jameson. Even his questions sound less pointed towards getting a rise from the witness and more like he’s trying to soothe her. It’s so anticlimactic that Peter has no objection to make and the whole courtroom is plunged into a silence that’s not unlike that of a trance.

Then things snapped back to reality.

“Are you absolutely sure that it was Doctor Octavius who experimented on you?”

She blinks, then her face contorts into rage and tears glimmer into existence, but they don’t fall.

“Didn’t I say that I wasn’t under any drug’s influence that could tamper with my mind? How can you stand there and ask me such a question?” Then her fury bypasses Wade and zeroes in on Octavius. “He experimented on me while I was conscious, paralyzed because— because he said I didn’t need to move, but I needed to be wide awake for the parasite to— to—”

She trails off, breathing heavily and fixing a point on her stand. Nobody speaks or moves during this break. Even Wade stands stock still in front of her as if he’s awaiting the final judgement. Then she snaps her attention back to Wade.

“Yes,” she says, a conviction and a burning fire in her eyes that Peter has never seen in her. “I am absolutely sure that he was the one who kidnapped and experimented on me.”

“I have no other questions.”

It lacks vitality and smugness, and when he turns around to take his seat, Peter sees uneasiness playing on his face before he clears his features of any trace of emotions. This trial is taking a toll on both of them, apparently.

Peter steels himself for the final round (and the one he still doesn’t want to go through with) as he comes to stand before her once again.

“I want a physical examination,” she announces before Peter can get a word out.

He blinks, then looks up at the judge, who is leaning towards Ms. Brant.

“Are you sure? Your lawyer already has the photos you have taken of the laboratory and the marks. Do you—”

“I’m sure,” she cuts in, harsh and fixing a point on her stand. “I want this. They need to see.”

Peter meets Judge Johnson’s gaze for a moment and then she nods.

The Bailiff calls out, “Doctor Miranda Cole is in the courtroom.”

Peter returns to his seat as Doctor Cole enters the floor. She unfolds a T-backed chair, and places it with the back towards the stand, so when Ms. Brant comes down, she straddles the chair so that her back is exposed to the jury and the audience.

She’s dressed in a simple, grey shirt that has a back zipper which makes it easier for her to show without taking off the shirt completely. Doctor Cole tells her something that Peter isn’t able to pick up what with the suppressants dulling all his senses, after which Ms. Brant nods without making eye contact with the doctor. She takes a deep breath as she makes herself more comfortable, her forearms at chest level on the T of the chair.

Doctor Cole is dressed in white and has her long hair clipped in a tight bun. Her gloved hands unzip the shirt with care until the cool air makes Ms. Brant shiver a bit.

Gasps resound all around the court, and even from the distance Peter is at he can see the angry-red punctures, three on each side of her spine to create a square. There’s also another mark, down at the end of the spine, but it looks unfinished and less deep than the others.

Doctor Cole touches the scars one by one, bending down to examine them closely, and Ms. Brant tenses visibly. The doctor is finishing with the last scar when a whimper escapes Ms. Brant before a wave of potent Omega pheromones hits Peter.

Now, there are two kinds of suppressants an Alpha or an Omega can take: the scent suppressants and the twelve hours pills. The first does what it says: blocks scents coming from you and from the people around you, and it has a duration of up to four hours. It depends on each individual’s body, and how fast the skin neutralizes the chemicals.

The second one is stronger and cannot be flushed out of one’s system before the hours are up, no matter how much the person taking them is in distress or great pain. Ms. Brant obviously by-passed the pills and used only the scent suppressants as the barrier they form around her scent breaks completely.

_ Anxietydreadhorrorshockfearpanic  _ riles the whole courtroom up, and Peter’s out of his seat on pure instinct, bodily stopping Wade’s advance.

Unlike Peter, who is mostly queasy from the onslaught of pheromones, Wade’s more susceptible to this even on suppressants, his Alpha unable to not respond to a terrorized Omega.

“Wade.” It’s clear and demanding his attention be solely on Peter.

Wade’s pushing against Peter, trying to get to the scared Omega to comfort her and assuage her fears, but Peter’s holding his ground, his strength matching the Alpha’s. Not being mated makes it hard for Peter to calm him down, as only a mate would be able to do that with minimal effort.

“Wade! Look at me!” It takes Wade a bit to blink and have his attention directed at Peter, the ventilation system already working double time. “Breathe. In, out.” He does as he says and Wade responds to the visual before his body relaxes and leans back from Peter.

“Shit,” he breathes out, turning and passing a hand over his face. “Sorry,” he mumbles.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He glances at Peter, then behind him and shakes his head as if trying to shrug off a thought or feeling. “Yes, I’m— yeah.”

He takes several more moments to make sure Wade’s back to having control over himself, before turning and meeting Judge Johnson’s gaze. They’ve escorted Ms. Brant out with the doctor while Peter’s been busy calming Wade down. There’s the slightest nod from the judge and she starts hitting the gavel and demanding order in the room.

Peter’s alone on his side when he sits down, which is better for him. There are no more distractions— Wade notwithstanding. He glances at the Alpha, but he’s bent over his desk, talking to his client.

“The defense,” Wade says, and there’s not a single trace of what transpired earlier which attests to the amount of self-control he possesses over himself. One reason why Peter allows the Alpha near him outside of the court. “Calls Doctor Otto Octavius to the stand.”

The man takes his seat and Wade begins with the standard questions, slowly moving towards the accusations to get his part of the story out. Peter’s taking notes, his writing turning more and more incomprehensible as the situation develops, marking where he needs to ask more  and where he needs to prod for a reaction.

It takes Wade twenty long minutes to finish the questioning, leaving the floor to Peter and his client with a closed off expression. Near the end of his questioning, Doctor Octavius became less respondent and more hostile, which made his attorney’s job all the more difficult.

The fact that Wade doesn’t make eye contact with Peter as he’s wont to do when this exchange happens tells Peter how much he’s out of it, and how much he wants this trial to be done and over with.

Just like Peter wants.

Suffice to say that Doctor Octavius is less than accommodating with Peter’s questions, eyes looking everywhere but at Peter, shifting in his seat and giving evasive answers. Judge Johnson has to intervene more than twice to make the man give a straight answer. It’s harrowing and has Peter near his wit’s end, but he takes a deep breath and asks the last question before letting the events that played out in the past two hours in the Jury’s hands.

“Do you confirm that you have been away on Prima Quo during Ms. Brant’s captivity?”

There’s a long pause, Peter’s gaze shifting towards the judge even as she prepares to intervene.

“I plead insanity.”

That has the room frozen in shock. The first thing Peter does is whirl around to look at Wade, whose face bears the evidence of being unaware of this. So it’s a decision Doctor Octavius made without letting his attorney know.

He recovers faster than the rest of the room.

“You are aware that by admitting that you were not sane during the act means that you will have to undergo a mental examination to ascertain that what you declared is true, right?”

Octavius nods, his stare vacant. “Yes.”

The judge doesn’t miss a bit as her gavel falls on the block, sounding ominous and final.

“The defendant has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, which means that he will be examined by a team of psychiatrists randomly selected by the Bench of Judges. He will be held in a cell for the entire duration of the examination. This court is adjourned until the results of the examination are released.”

The gavel marks the ending of the trial.

Peter won the case. Whether or not Doctor Octavius is found with a mental illness, he will be behind the bars by the end of the week.

“Thirteen,” he says, stopping by Wilson’s desk. But he’s not feeling the victory as he thought he would. There’s a sour taste in his mouth and his stomach is upset.

He leaves behind a silent Wade who’s staring at the hands he splayed over the documents on his table.

 

***

“I might be twelve won trials behind you, but I ain’t giving up.”

He orders himself scotch, and Peter smirks before downing his in one go and ordering another.

“I’m two glasses down already.” Peter turns slightly towards Wade.

Wade grins mischievously at Peter after he nods his thanks when the bartender places the glass of scotch in front of him.

“Baby boy, you know I can drink you under the table.”

Peter sighs and accepts his defeat. No point in repeating the humiliating performance from three years ago when he thought he’d be able to out-drink this jackass, and ended up being escorted home by the man, divested to his boxers and then tucked into his bed like a kid without Peter recalling anything.

Wade’s still giving him shit about that to this day.

“You still lost today. Prepare yourself better next time. Even by your standards that was a piss poor job you did out there.”

“Maybe I didn’t believe in the case like you did.”

Peter glances at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Wade shrugs and Peter frowns at him, then shakes his head and sips from his glass. He wants to get home on his own two feet, and he already feels pleasantly loose. He glances sideways at the Alpha.

“Thanks,” Wade says out of the blue.

“For beating your ass in court? Any time.” He grins and Wade chuckles, shaking his head.

“I mean… for stopping me.” He downs his scotch in one go.

Peter traces the wobbly outline of the three cubes in his glass. How is he supposed to answer that? You’re welcome? Sounds like that’s his job. Yeah, right. His job: stopping Alpha from following their instincts. But then again, that’s sort of been how their weird relationship has been working for the past years. He helps Peter scratch an itch, Peter helps him do the same.

A mutually beneficial relationship, seeing as neither one of them is looking for a serious relationship. With the kind of jobs they had, neither would be able to juggle a family on top of that. Either that or, as it’s Peter case, he doesn’t want to spare that kind of energy on anything or anyone aside from his job.

But he has his needs that have to be tended to. Having sex outside his cycles, he found, relieved the intensity of his heat and make the two days he’s confined to his bed more bearable.

So he stopped looking too closely at their relationship when they became frenemies with benefits three years ago.

Peter shrugs, feeling that the atmosphere between them became too maudlin, so he glances at Wade and smirks in that particular way where he tells Wade all he needs to know about what Peter wants right now.

He pays for his drink and leaves.

And as always, when Peter leaves an open invitation with Wade, he can never be expected to get all his five fingers right for the scanner to read his palm and allow them in.

“Wade! A fucking—” he gasps, that wicked tongue drawing a wet line right over the base where neck meets shoulder, the one that an Alpha would pierce when mating an Omega. “Shit! Do that again! We need to get in.”

Two currently opposing demands that pull out a breathy chuckle from Wade. He manhandles Peter so that his front slams into the wall next to his door (Peter’s moan loud and needy) and takes his hand to press it on the scanner just as his hips start thrusting against Peter’s ass.

They stumble inside before the door closes, and it’s a disorderly dash to get rid of their respective shoes and suits  _ and  _ get to Peter’s bedroom.

They don’t.

Mostly because Wade not-so-secretly loves the fluffy, huge rug in front of the couch. No coffee table. Just a white, extra long couch facing floor-to-ceiling windows. Yeah, Peter can understand why he likes that space in particular so much, which is why he teases Wade relentlessly, going so far as to tell him that he won’t ever be in need of a dog, seeing as Wade fills that position so nicely.

That usually results in biting insults and poorly disguised innuendos from Wade, all finishing in attacking Peter’s performance during sex to which Peter always answers by throwing the first object at hand.

Not right now.

Because right now he’s splayed like a full course menu on the damn fluffy rug and given a blowjob to make his overworking mind go blank as Wade ruthlessly sucks the orgasm out of him.

He’s left breathing hard, muscles quivering from the fast and violent climax, and so brain-dead that he could be accused of being Stalin’s murderer and he’d nod and plead guilty.

“Delicious as always,” Wade says, licking his lips from corner to corner and sprawling himself on his side along Peter’s body.

“You’re the only one who’d say that after blowing me.”

“Does that mean that I’m the only one giving you blowjobs?”

Peter snorts a laugh, still coming down from the high. He can’t quite make out Wade’s face as he’s with his back towards the city lights pouring in from the windows, but there’s a quiet and sincere hope laced with those words.

“You’re the only one fucking me right now. Period.”

Wade scoots over (where? He’s already plastered to Peter’s side) and pushes his face into Peter’s neck, breathing him in as if that’s the only air he’ll ever need. And Peter lets him; he always does. It’s how they’ve established, without ever talking about it, how this thing between them works.

Besides, Peter likes the attention, the touches. It soothes that primal need for a strong Alpha to care for him in this way. He got so used to Wade’s scarred skin that, now, being touched by him brings about a natural calmness of which he wasn’t aware before that he craved. Or needed in any capacity.

He pushes Wade down out of the blue and climbs him with a smug smirk, then he slithers down, dragging his own body over Wade’s because he knows how sensitive his skin is, and the moans don’t fail to show Peter how right he is.

“My turn,” he says before taking Wade into his mouth and going all the way down.

Being painfully familiar with somebody else’s cock helps one do that. Not to mention that Wade always comes fast after Peter’s mouth is on him, and Peter likes to think that it’s his gained expertise after years of doing this with him that makes the Alpha spill himself. Maybe it’s the fact that Peter knows how to massage the base of his cock when it inflates with the knot, that pushes Wade over the edge so succinctly.

Maybe it’s magic.

Specifically Peter’s Magic Mouth.

He should trademark that. Later. Now he’s busy licking Wade’s cock clean. One other thing that he likes about this bastard that makes him want to crush rocks between his teeth during trials is that he’s not very vocal during sex. And he’s not referring only to the dirty talk. There’s also little shouting or moaning going on, which Peter might have taken it as an insult to his skills if he didn’t know Wade better.

It’s when he’s silent that he really enjoys it.

Instead, Peter’s addicted to the breathy moans and low growls, the hitch in his breath when Peter does something that feels particularly good, the occasional praise or remark.

Right now, Wade’s breathing starts to return to normal, but he hasn’t moved from his spot, eyes closed and hands thrown haphazardly around head level. He’s beautiful bathed in the city light; there’s no doubt about that. He’s humming, the sound vibrating in his chest, and the only reason for that is because Peter hasn’t stopped drawing circles with his thumbs into his inner thighs.

“C’mere, you little minx,” Wade murmurs, the lazy smile and the gravel quality of his voice making Peter smile, too.

There’s a hand fluttering somewhere above Wade’s stomach, but Peter’s in no hurry to take it.

“Didn’t know we’re at the pet name stage.”

“For an old married couple like us, we went directly to the insult stage.”

Peter snorts, but doesn’t deny any part of that. He’s too tired to look at semantics and Wade always says weird stuff after he unloads, which Peter never took to heart.

But sometimes… no. Not important.

He drops at Wade’s side, head propped in his bend hand as he uses the other one to draw and follow bumpy lines on Wade’s front.

“So what did you think about today’s trial?”

“Fucking hell, baby boy,” — he shivers as Peter’s fingertips draw a circle around one of his nipples, and then he frowns, but he keeps his eyes resolutely shut — “warn a man when you’re about to crash-land him into reality!”

“You didn’t like it either, hm?”

“I don’t think there was anything to like there. There never is. Unless it’s litigations and dying wills. That’s where you can write sagas on how greedy or stupid people can be. Even in this new day and new age, as they say.”

“I know,” Peter says quietly. “What I meant by ‘like’ was simply the game we usually engage into when we’re on opposing sides.”

This is when Wade peers open one eye. “We had fun.”

“In the beginning.”

He sees and feels Wade’s chest rise with a sigh and then deflate as he places his palm over his diaphragm.

“Well, we can’t have fun all the time.”

“You didn’t expect him to plead insanity.”

He’s silent for a moment. “I didn’t expect him to resist for as long as he did, is as much as I’m saying.”

Client-attorney confidentiality. The process is not over yet.

“Still, the jackass got what he deserved. And by his hand. Not sure being thrown in an asylum would be better than jail, but hey, I didn’t sign the rest of my life away with my own mouth. And I’m sure you would’ve had him, even if he didn’t tell everybody that he was—  _ is  _ insane. You had the jurors eating out of your palm. I didn’t need to intervene in any way.”

Peter stares. “You wouldn’t have been impartial, if the process went on, is that what you’re saying?”

Wade purses his lips. “I couldn’t help but imagine you in her stead. Couldn’t stomach it.”

“You actually brought your personal feelings on the matter into the court!” He draws back, frowning. “I can’t believe you!”

“I may be a lawyer,” he says, sitting up and bending one knee to place his elbow on, “but I’m also an Alpha. I can’t stand seeing Omega abused and their abusers roaming the galaxy free.”

He studies Wade’s face even cast into shadows as it is.

“You’d serve justice yourself, if you weren’t bound by the oath you swore when you finished Law.”

Wade grins and it’s full of teeth, empty of humor. “You’d do the same.”

Peter looks at the seam of the rug, its whiteness clashing with the black of the floor.

“I’d bring them to justice.”

“You’d still give them the beating they deserve before doing that.”

Peter huffs a laugh. He doesn’t deny that.

“I love you.”

His head whips up so fast that something cracks in his neck.

“I’m sorry, what?”

Wade’s picking at the rug. “You heard what I said.”

Peter shakes his head vehemently. “No, that’s just your Alpha talking. It’s the post-coital bliss that makes you—”

“Peter,” he says, firm and low. “I love you. I’ve been in love with you since we started sleeping with each other.”

“You never— impossible.”

Wade laughs humorlessly. “It’s actually not.” He meets Peter’s gaze, then looks down at his hands. “But I can also understand why you wouldn’t want to be with such a scarred Alpha.”

“No. You can’t just dump— what did you expect would come out of your confession?”

Wade shrugs, a horrible, self-deprecating chuckle escaping his lips.

“Followed my instincts.” He glances at Peter. “Took advantage of the fact that you weren’t ready to stop me from doing that.” He shrugs again. “Dunno. Those words have been eating at my seams for the past three years, Peter. I had to get them out. Tell you… how I feel, even if that… that would mean breaking us apart.”

“You— no. No. Why?”

“Because you’ve been in denial this whole time.” Wade studies his face for a few moments. “Do you remember what you told me back when we decided to become fuck buddies? You made it clear that you didn’t want a relationship out of this, but tell me, what would you call what we have if not a relationship? Badly sewn, patched with muddled feelings, but a relationship.”

Peter’s shaking his head as if he’s trying to see at what point it will fall off. Wade extends his hand towards him, but he stands up and walks to the window.

“I don’t think we should continue this conversation.”

“Why? Because you’re in denial? Or because I’m not good enough for you?”

It’s been a long time since such simple words hurt Peter so deeply. He thought this — what they have — was going to be simple.

“Why did you have to bring feelings into this?”

“Why the fuck not?” Now he’s standing, too, but makes no move to approach Peter.

The smile his lips paint as he looks over his shoulder at Wade, feels more like a grimace.

“One of us will have to start answering the questions we keep asking.”

“Fine by me. You start.”

“Fucking five year old,” Peter breathes out, returning his attention to the boring view outside.

“Well this fucking  _ five year old  _ is expecting answers from the oh-so-adult man gazing outta the window like a fucking model hired for a perfume ad.”

“You can leave now, you know?”

“Why? Because you’ve had enough of this scarred Alpha who doesn’t know when enough’s enough?”

“Stop saying that about yourself. I never thought about you in those terms, and you know that.”

He’s not looking at Wade because right now he feels too vulnerable and off-kilter to take him head-on like he usually does. With each word out of his mouth, always calm and calculated, he’s hurting even more. He fans his fingers on the cool window, propping his forehead and closing his eyes to block everything that wants to get out.

“Then start answering the questions.”

“You need to leave.”

“I won’t. Not before you answer at least one question. Come on, it’s not that hard, it starts with ‘because’ and ends with whatever the fuck you want it to end.”

“This is not how communication works. Leave.”

“You bet your fine ass that this is not how communication works, but I only see one stubborn man refusing to look me in the eyes while he tells me to leave.”

Peter opens his eyes and blinks twice before he forcibly pulls himself from the cocoon he made around himself, and in two strides he meets Wade’s gaze head on.

“Wade,” — he cannot mask the way his voice trembles — “please leave.”

There are tears already gathered in Wade’s eyes, and they stay like that, the distance of a palm separating them, as they stare each other down.

“Please.”

Wade’s thumb catches the tear that escapes Peter’s left eye before he collects his clothes strewn over the living room. He dresses himself haphazardly as he puts on his shoes and then there’s only the quiet sound of the door closing and a vacuum of silence left behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A\N: I chose to follow the rule that applies to "anime" and "manga", in that you don't add the plural "s" at the end because they're not English words. So that's why you have only Alpha\Beta\Omega no matter the context.


	2. Chapter 2

**— Part II —**

 

There are no more cases he has to take over the next week, so because he knows himself, he occupies his time with physical exercises and updates on laws as well as designing new suits to wear in court. Last one had nanotech added to it, but that’s just because Mr. Stark got his hands on the sketches which he was about to send them to his personal tailor, Mr. Lee.

The man has the self-control of a bull in a china shop.

Admittedly, that’s his favorite suit to date, so he has no reason why he should criticise Mr. Stark.

He’s currently running through Central Park to burn off the excess of energy he accumulated yesterday by staying inside the whole day and poring over laws, familiarizing himself with old ones and going through the notes of some of his first cases to pinpoint the issues he could’ve avoided or where he should’ve prodded for more.

Get a reaction out of the witness— like Wade does.

And he’s back to square one.

He comes to an unexpected halt, palms on his knees to just breathe. He already ran three km. If he wants to do the length of the park, he’ll have to do three km more as this one is twice as big as the one Nova York had on Earth. And there’s real grass and trees around with real earth, and sometimes flowers, because this is the rich area of Nova York. The rest of the city is just grey and rusty brown, black and mustard.

Nature has become a thing of privilege on this metal base.

He takes off his running shoes and socks and walks on the grass, relishing the feeling of yielding earth and rough, ticklish grass. He stays there for what feels like hours, untethered from his problems, job, memories— Wade.

Wade.

That’s a nasty trick his mind plays on him, no matter how much he focuses on letting every thought pass by without letting it run its course. But anything that starts or has Wade in it takes root and expands.

He’s done his best this week to push back their— breakup. Is it even breakup if they hadn’t even been in a relationship? But maybe it’s just him that has avoided putting a name to what they had, and Wade was already steps ahead of him.

It still baffles him that he didn’t see this coming. Didn’t see Wade changing— because he didn’t. Not visibly. He stayed the same obnoxious, stubborn, funny, freakishly good at satisfying Peter in bed Alpha he has ever met. And he deals with Alpha on a daily basis. Most of them seem to have reverted to the Victorian gentleman era in their mannerism, but  _ not a single one  _ can hide his or her Alpha nature when an Omega is around.

Granted, their scientists (helped not in a small way by Dr. Banner and Mr. Stark) have made leaps in developing suppressants that have little to no side-effects, provided one follows their medical prescription to the letter. And they’re accessible to anyone who needs them no matter their socioeconomic background.

He’s sweaty when he reaches home, and his muscles are quivering as the wall and overhead shower clean his body. He needs to talk to Wade; he can’t ignore him for much longer.

And it’s not because he has an itch to scratch. He misses Wade’s company, and dubious wit, and this week had been a terrible week for his mood. Occupying his brain and body can push the Alpha from his mind for so long, but it cannot fill in the emptiness within him or calm the restlessness lurking underneath his skin.

Did his Omega attune to the Alpha already?

Well, seeing as they’ve been in each other’s pockets for three years, it’s not a huge leap. He just didn’t realize it until now.

There’s a call waiting for him on the flexi stuck into its repository on the kitchen island. His eyebrows climb on his forehead at the name.

“Judge Johnson,” he greets as her head appears in a hologram.

“Mr. Parker. Otto Octavius was examined and found not insane. The jury declared him guilty.”

“That took… quite some time.”

“Yeah, well it’s not easy to find psychiatrists without sketchy backgrounds. It takes time. But that’s not why I called you. A Mr. Ajax Powers was earlier in my office filing a direct accusation of murder— against you.”

“What?” His brain screeches to a halt, unable to compute such a thing. “Who— on behalf of who?”

“Harry Osborn.”

His legs almost give out on him, if his hands didn’t already plant firmly on the granite surface.

“I—” But he knows the law; whatever he says on the matter now can be held as evidence against him. “Am I allowed to choose my own attorney?”

“Seeing as this is an unprecedented event, yes, you are allowed.”

Four names cross his mind without him even needing to think hard about it: Vanessa Carlisle, Gwen Stacy, Matt Murdock, and Jennifer Walters (dubbed She-Hulk because she’s a force to be reckoned with on the floor). They’re right up there with him and Wade: the best Biollante Pentagon has ever had.

Picking Gwen Stacy, however, might result in a conflict of interest as they’ve been in a relationship in the past (known to everybody of import), whereas Vanessa Carlisle, from what he gathered, does better with litigations and cases that don’t involve murder or other kinds of abuse. Jennifer Walters might be a viable option, but she’s currently in the Varmit galaxy, settling conflict of interests between two leaders of different races. What a time to be alive.

Gwen is an Alpha; Vanessa is an Omega. Matt is an Alpha, too, and deals with murder allegations on a daily basis.

If he ever had to pick one among the three, Matt would fit the bill perfectly.

“Take your time and choose wisely. The Corpus cannot afford to lose you to this, which is why until your name is cleared, you will remain under house arrest. Your AI already received the protocol.”

“If I may, I already know who I want as my attorney.”

  
  


***

“ _ Peter,”  _ Karen interrupts his poring over every bit of information he could gather in the past four hours on Harry Osborn and Oscorp in general. “ _ Wade Wilson is asking for permission to enter.” _

Peter jumps up from the stool, hissing as various places in his body crack since he hasn’t moved much. His preferred spot for doing this kind of thing is the damn fluffy rug, but  _ things  _ have happened there which he doesn’t want to remember right now.

Not that having the cause of his avoidance walking in his apartment is any better.

He skids to a halt in the hallway, fluffy socks sliding over the varnished planks, which is separated from the living room by a fake wall.

“Let him in,” he breathes out as his hand tightens over the edge of the wall.

They stare at each other the moment the door opens, both unwilling to move — or maybe that’s just Peter and the rabbit heart clogging his throat at the moment.

“Come in,” he croaks, and that’s when Wade unlocks himself and steps inside, the door whooshing close behind him.

“I must say,” Wade begins, taking off his shoes without bending down to use his hands. “I’m a bit annoyed that you murdered someone without me knowing about it. Could’ve helped you dispose of the body, you know.”

He feels his face crack with a smile, weak, but there.

“Couldn’t stand the idea of sharing the spotlight.”

Wade stops before him, eyes roaming over his face, drinking him in. He clicks his tongue and Peter finds himself zooming in on the way his lips separate to reveal white teeth.

“I’m impressed you managed to hide such greed from me all this time.”

“You know what they say,” — his voice is barely above a whisper — “you can never know a person too well.”

Wade is silent for a while. “What happened?” he says softly.

Peter releases the wall and sinks his hands into his lounge pants’ pockets, shrugging. He goes to the kitchen, hearing Wade follow him close by, to where various holo-windows float above the granite island.

“What do you know?”

“That someone high on the food chain filed a murder accusation against you and that you appointed me as your attorney. The rest was for you to share with me when we met.”

He inhales deeply and then releases the air slowly. “Harry Osborn, son of Norman Osborn, and my— former best friend, filed the accusation.”

Wade’s eyes narrow as he brings up various holo-windows, pushing each one away once he finishes skimming through the information.

“Who’s his attorney?” Peter bites his lower lip and Wade’s gaze fastens over the movement. “Peter.”

“Ajax Powers.”

“ _ Fucking Francis!” _ he groans. “Should’ve known.”

“I know you don’t see eye to eye with him after he got in-between you and Vanessa, but—”

“No, no, no. Correction: he didn’t get in-between us. He just introduced Angel to Vanessa. That’s all. I always knew Ness was bi, but I never knew she’d hit it off with that Alpha rendition of less angry Rosie O’Donnell. That hurt. But I hate his guts because he’s a slithering douchebag who always tampers with the evidence to win the case. He’s everyone who has committed the crime they’re accused of favorite lawyer.”

“Oh. Well, the first hearing is in two weeks.”

“That’s too short. Who decided this?”

“Judge Johnson.”

Wade lifts an eyebrow and Peter purses his lips, rolling his eyes.

“Political pressure.”

The Alpha flops on a stool, fingertips drumming a rhythm on the granite.

“Wonder when the Supreme Court will stop taking orders from political jackasses.”

“You know all nine justices need to unanimously pass certain laws. And you know I’ve been appealing to them for the past four years to pass the law that would punish any and all interference with the Supreme Court’s decisions. The Chief Justice is the one opposing it. But his mandate is coming to an end in a month. They’re already thinking of appointing Judge Johnson for that position and have Jennifer Walters be the ninth justice.”

Wade snorts. “Don’t think she’s gonna like the permanent bench job.”

Peter nods. “I know. Matt Murdock is the second option.”

“Any third?”

“No. They’ve been examining us for the past two years and those two have been the only ones all the justices approved of.”

“Aw, they don’t want any Wade Wilson sitting his ass among them? I’m hurt.”

Peter huffs. “Maybe they like the entertainment we provide every time we’re on opposing sides on the same case.”

“True. I hear that being judge is the most boring position one can hold.”

“But it’s higher than us on that food chain of yours.”

Wade grins. “You betcha. It’s the level where you can start frying and eating medium-size prey. Like Francis.”

If there’s one constant in Wade’s line of thinking it’s his deep-seated hatred of the man.

“Then all the more reason for you to ingratiate yourself with the judges.”

“Not if you keep helping me put on a good show for them.”

Peter looks at him without adding anything to the conversation, then turns around and pours hot coffee in old-fashioned mugs. He places one near Wade’s right arm as he takes a seat at the head of the island.

“There’s a long night waiting for us,” he says as he takes a sip of his coffee.

“Damn right there is!” He takes a sip as well and promptly moans his pleasure at the fresh brew.

And those words play at the back of his mind, accompanied by the moan, like a broken record for the next several hours as they pore over every bit of information Peter gathered. Then Wade moves on to make phone calls to people he knows, who might have more info on what happened, as Peter fills their mugs again and again. He stays in the kitchen as Wade talks to people in his bedroom, because he needs to keep the information about the case to a minimum as he’s not a lawyer, but Wade’s client right now.

Not to mention that right next to Wade’s pet name, he can’t help but recall the last conversation he had with Harry, the way he phrased his sentences, the ominous deranged smile. He knows he didn’t murder Norman Osborn as he’s accused of.

The question here is why did Harry incriminate him?

 

***

The feeling of something moving near him has him jolt awake. It takes him a second to realize that he fell asleep on the kitchen table while Wade’s been talking on the phone in his bedroom.

He grumbles something until he gets his vocal cords to work properly.

“What time izzit?”

“Half past twelve.”

“Fuck, been sleeping for half an hour.”

“That you did.” And that sounds like Wade stopped himself from adding something, but he’s too sleepy to think much about it. “I should get going.”

“Did you find anything useful?”

“I did. Weasel is a gem when he’s not busy cooking up names for me.”

“You should stay,” Peter finds himself saying now that he caught up with what Wade said before.

They both pause, Peter mostly because he’s waiting for an answer from Wade.

“Are you sure? I mean, I can go and return tomorrow morning. Let you—”

“I may be tired, but I’m conscious of what I’m saying. Stay.” He turns and leaves the open kitchen. “You already have PJs here. Can take the couch since you’re so enamored with the rug.”

Wade must follow him because the sound of his huffed laughter is too close to him to come from the kitchen. He pulls out bed sheets and a pillow from his deep closet and then hands them to Wade.

He looks at the stacked ensemble, and Peter’s starting to get annoyed with the fact that the Alpha takes so long to take the damn things from his extended arms. They’re starting to hurt.

“If you don’t take them now, I’m gonna let them fall on the floor. Arms hurt,” he mumbles, too tired for any kind of shit.

But Wade huffs, that amused expression making some dormant butterfly flutter in his stomach.

“You know I’ll need a cover, right?”

Peter frowns, then looks down at his arms. There’s the pillow. Check. The bed sheet. Check. The— no, there isn’t. He huffs and rolls his eyes.

“‘Kay, my bad. Take them.” He doesn’t even wait for Wade to do that as he throws them up and turns to take out the cover.

Wade’s reflexes are better than Peter’s at this hour and only with half a brain functioning, so he catches them easily. Then Peter dumps a folded cover so plush that covers Wade’s head entirely.

“Gonna hunt for your PJs. Don’t remember where I put them,” Peter says, bending sideways to make eye contact with Wade.

After Wade nods and leaves to make his own bed, Peter stares at the closet for a good minute, trying to wrack his brain for the location of those clothes but coming up blank as his brain is halfway into Dreamland already. Wonderful. He slides doors left and right, then goes into his walk-in wardrobe to take his own PJs because he might as well change now before he clocks in, and wonder of all wonders, Wade’s sleepwear is neatly folded underneath Peter’s.

Yes, because Peter’s awake brain thought it the best place for them to be. He couldn’t have put them together with the bed linen he gives Wade every time he sleeps over. No, that’s something Peter Awake Parker does not do.

Figures.

He takes them out so that he remembers to bring them to Wade and changes into a thin, grey-cream shirt and faded black lounge pants.

Wade takes a deep breath of his own clothing when Peter hands them to him, which, okay, that looks unusual, but Peter’s seen weirder stuff, and Wade  _ is  _ an Alpha. That’s a thing with them, he remembers. Now, if he dares tell him that his sleepwear stinks or smells funny, he’s going to toss this Alpha out on his lawyer-suit clad ass and call Murdock.

“They smell like you.”

Peter’s too brain-dead right now to come up with a comeback to that so he just smiles tiredly, glad that he won’t be required to do any physical work or think farther than how much more time he has before he’s going to dump his own ass into his huge bed and sleep the day away. The Alpha’s nose remains buried in his own clothes, breathing them in like addiction has always been right underneath his name on his medical file.

“Night, Wade.”

It takes Peter only as long as reaching the little hallway that connects his bedroom with the bathroom to hear Wade’s quiet answer.

“Goodnight, Peter.”

He falls into his bed on top of the covers with the fuzziest, warmest feeling in his chest since before they parted ways a week ago, and promptly falls asleep.

Morning feels like it comes five minutes after Peter’s head sinks into his pillow, but Karen informs him that he slept for six hours, twenty-one minutes and twelve seconds.

“Thanks for the accurate…” he mumbles something else, but not even he knows what his mouth wants to say.

“ _ You’re welcome, Peter.”  _ Pause. “ _ Wade wants you to know that coffee is ready, if you are awake.” _

“He’s not making it any easier for me, is he?” he grumbles, now more awake and coherent.

He goes about his morning routine before he emerges from the bathroom to a living room that smells of coffee and Wade’s special breakfast: Mexican frittata. As he said already: Wade’s not making it any easier for him.

“I’m gonna have to meet with some people today,” Wade says, manners a thing of the past as he talks around the food in his mouth.

Peter’s better at this, so he waits until he swallows the bite he took, his mouth pooling with saliva because  _ goddammit it tastes fantastic _ .

“I so want to go with you and hear their depositions,” he tells that to his plate.

“I know, but now you’re the client. Can’t have you there.”

Peter sighs. “You don’t have to rub it in.”

Wade opens his mouth, but closes it into a tight line as he turns his attention to his own breakfast and shoves a big mouthful in. Peter takes his own bite, all the while scrutinizing Wade, and he waits, again, until he finishes.

“This is not working.”

“What isn’t?”

“This,” — he flutters his fork between them — “you wanting to say more, but stopping yourself. It’s getting on my nerves.”

Wade cocks a non-existing eyebrow. “And whose fault is that?”

“So now it’s  _ my  _ fault?”

The Alpha lifts one palm up. “Please, Peter, I don’t want to fight over breakfast.”

Peter blows some air. “I’m not trying to fight, you know. Just— I don’t like this.”

“You’ll have to be more elaborate than that.”

He throws him a dirty look. “You’re gonna make me say it, aren’t you?”

Wade shrugs. “It depends entirely on you. I already told you how I feel, but you didn’t like what you heard or you simply don’t feel the same way about me, I don’t know. But you asking me to be your attorney after a week of radio silence is sending some very mixed signals my way—” And again that hold up. That closing of his mouth to keep something in. “So you tell me. What is this?” — fork fluttering between them — “What do you want from whatever we have — or had?”

“Why is it me that needs to have a final say in this?”

“Because I already know what I want— Peter. And I made it clear to you. It’s you who I have no idea what you want or feel or  _ think.  _ It’s driving me crazy!”

“Oh, so now  _ you’re  _ the one that’s driven crazy? You who say that you already made yourself clear to me, but then you come here and you act like you have something stuck in your ass and don’t know how to tell me which sends some very  _ weird  _ signals  _ my  _ way. What am I supposed to think of that?”

Wade drew in breath to argue, but then stopped as Peter kept talking, and finished by expelling all the air into a chuckle.

“Did you hear yourself just now? You sounded exactly like the people who are deep in denial about something.”

“I’m not,” he grits out, now picking at his food.

“Peter,” he says as he leans over the island and covers Peter’s hand with his. “How do you feel about me?”

He peers up at the Alpha, still brooding. “Right now? I feel like kicking you in the nuts for being such a jerk to me.”

Wade laughs and squeezes his hand.

“Maybe let’s keep the violence to Alpha-friendly.”

Peter shoots him a look. “I can always use your pillow as a weapon, and you know how much damage I can do with soft things.”

It’s probably because he says all that with a straight face that has Wade cracking up which, inevitably, makes Peter break into chuckles, too. He doesn’t take back his hand or dislodge Wade’s warm one. Feelings or not, Peter got used to Wade’s presence, his voice, the way he thinks, acts, and talks. He’s so attuned to all of that that it’s hard for him to live on and not have any kind of contact with the Alpha.

He can flush him out of his system like his body does with the suppressants, but— he doesn’t want to be alone again. It’s a selfish reason, and he doesn’t even try to find a selfless one that would cover up the first because, ultimately, every single person of what’s left of humanity feels the same. Loneliness is their greatest fear.

And yet, he’s still skirting around the elephant in the room, his drilled rule about what they have coming back to raise fears — or conjure ones.

“I need to meet up with some people in half an hour,” Wade says, the amusement still in his voice as is the smile on his face, and Peter sighs, accepting the fact that the audio-visual pleases him like nothing else ever will. “Be back tonight to take your deposition.”

“You know mine should be the first, seeing as I’m the accused here.”

“Yeah, but this is an unusual case that requires unusual proceedings.”

Peter frowns. “Are you going about this the illegal way?”

Wade chuckles and shakes his head. “No, nothing illegal. Just— off the record.”

He cocks an eyebrow. “So illegal.”

“It’s not,” he says it with a sigh — a fond one at that. “You’ll see.”

But Peter doesn’t let his hand go when he stands up.

“The conversation we had— it’s not over.”

Wade’s features melt into something soft and he rounds the island, stopping at Peter’s side. Just as he’s about to ask him what he’s doing, Wade bends down and kisses his crown of unruly hair for a long moment, breathing him in. And probably not finding that particular smell that each Omega has, considering that he already took his pill and used scent suppressants.

The Alpha doesn’t comment or show any kind of expression on his face as he leans back. Neither actually got to smell each other without some chemical or other blocking — if not entirely, then close to — their natural smell.

“It’s not over,” he confirms and then leaves.

Wonderful. He only has, what, eleven or twelve hours until they’ll continue their discussion, and that’s only if ‘tonight’ means seven o’clock in Wade’s book.

 

***

It’s actually his own stomach that wakes him up, late that afternoon. He had been poring over the documents Wade left in his flexi and the new info he sent to him from the sources he gathered — or is gathering.

The first thing he sees is sunset — or what dubs as sunset because the base is moving around at a snail’s pace to mimic a planet’s rotation (more specifically Earth’s.) But then he takes in a silhouetted Wade, sitting on the white rug with his back to Peter, one bent knee on which his elbow rests, which also gives easier access to the thumbnail that he’s currently biting.

Peter doesn’t move. He doesn’t want to spook the image into changing, not when Wade is so deep into his thoughts, basking in the warm sunset light. The fact that he’s at arm’s length has Peter smile indulgently at the back of his Alpha’s head. Well, not technically  _ his  _ Alpha, but his Alpha nonetheless.

After so many years, he’s allowed to use a possessive on him, if not something else.

But Wade’s not deep into his thoughts, rather, he is murmuring something to someone. He’s probably talking to someone into his ear piece.

“Play it again,” he’s saying. “Slower.” Pause. “Stop. Cut that piece between zero-five and zero-five point thirty-four and put it into Exhibit A.”

He glances at Peter then, and Peter gives him a lopsided smile.

“Hey there, Sleeping Beauty,” he says softly, as if to match the expression he wears.

Peter hums and extends an arm, which Wade takes in both his hands, and Peter closes his eyes, relishing the skin-on-skin contact, the warmth and bumpy texture that relaxes his Omega completely. When did he become so used, so  _ attuned  _ to this Alpha that the simplest of touches brings him so much peace and well-being that he forgets that a world of problems exists outside of his immediate sense of touch?

That’s by far the easiest question he could ever ask himself, because he knows — had known for a long time — when and how and why it all started.

“How long’ve you been here? Told Karen to let you in.”

“About an hour or so,” he says, nuzzling Peter’s palm like he’s the one touch-starved.

Peter chuckles when it becomes ticklish and Wade just kisses the inside of his wrist and then smiles at Peter.

For as long as he’s known Wade, he’s never been self-conscious of the burn marks (their fight notwithstanding) that extend all over his skin, but he told Peter that it hasn’t always been like that and that he’s grateful Peter wasn’t there to see him at his darkest moments. Peter’s not sure he agrees with that to this day.

“Fell asleep making notes on what we got all day long.”

He twines their fingers before he hums, studying the contrast they make.

“Saw them. You still think that we should play our game on the jury’s emotions?”

Peter turns on his back, humming, and closes his eyes as he flexes his hand only to have Wade’s respond instantly. He smiles.

“Powers will anyway,” Peter says, "because he knows that you’re not good at that.”

Wade scrunches up his nose. “Looks pointless to me when the evidence is there, blinding everyone and their blind grandma.”

He peers one eye open. “That’s why you won the last case.”

“Low blow, Parker.”

Peter grins and pushes himself up on his elbow, Wade’s hand coming with his.

“Learn to cover your weaknesses better, Wilson.” He smirks, but Wade doesn’t mirror it because his eyes fall on his lips, a look Peter knows too well shadowing his gaze. “I’m hungry.”

His eyes snap up to Peter’s and he cocks an eyebrow. “Do I look like your personal chef?”

“No, but I know that you like to cook for me.” He lies back on the armrest, still smirking. “Cover your weaknesses.”

“What’s the point when you already know them?” There’s a soft, warm touch to his knuckles, there and gone, and Peter doesn’t open his eyes in time to see it as Wade’s already standing.

“Point.”

They eat in silence because Peter’s too busy inhaling the food.

“Didn’t you eat today?” Wade looks as if he’s gearing up for a lecture.

“Did,” he says around a mouthful of enchiladas and oh joy, he finally reached Wade’s level of manners. “Hours ago. And this is dinner.”

But Wade’s still looking at him with suspicion. It’s funny how he never tries to hide this fussy side of himself, despite knowing that Peter hates being coddled. But maybe — maybe a little bit won’t do him any harm. That’s what he thought back then when he called Wade less and less on this and Wade saw that as invitation to continue. Which — fast-forward three years later — means that he now has an Alpha who fights him over forgetting about himself when he’s deep into a case, doesn’t mind cooking for him and supplies Peter with enough physical contact to keep him sated and happy.

And then he confessed, and Peter’s unsure if it’s worth taking what Wade’s offering or if he should cut the Alpha out completely. So now they’re stuck in limbo, and he knows Wade’s not fine with this because he’s an Alpha and he wants answers. Just like Peter— minus the Alpha. Neither deals well with unresolved issues, but Peter doesn’t even know where to  _ begin _ addressing what he feels— for Wade.

Where does he draw the line between ‘I enjoy your company’ and ‘I want to spend the rest of my life mated to you’?

Mating — that’s the end goal, if he accepts what Wade’s offering. And it can’t be reversed. A mating is for life. So the next issue his brain is pondering upon is: does he really want that with Wade? Will he be able to meet Wade on the same level five, ten, twenty years from now?

It’s easy to go along with how he feels right now and mate Wade, but he doesn’t want to be miserable or see Wade get sick and tired of him years down the line. It’s a possibility. It always is, despite being connected by the bite in a way that contractual marriage will never be able to achieve.

Mating is what they call ‘a marriage of souls’ because more often than not it doesn’t result in a baby.

“I’m gonna take your deposition now,” Wade says after they clean the island and sit opposite each other so that the video-recorder can record Peter’s facial expression too. “You know the drill.”

“Yeah. Be as concise as I can.”

“Good.” He counts down with his fingers and then the stick facing Peter turns on. “State your name and job title.”

“Peter Benjamin Parker, lawyer starting my 5 th Bar.” Which is two levels below being officially into the group that become judges’ assistants or move on to become intergalactic lawyers like Jennifer Walters.

Wade nods and swipes with his finger on the flexi. “Do you know why you are being recorded?”

He nods, and he should look into the little blue light at the top of the stick, but Wade’s a much more compelling sight than a piece of technology.

“Yes. I was accused by Harry Osborn of taking part in the murder of his father, Norman Osborn.”

“Do you agree with the allegations?”

Peter frowns. “No.”

Wade nods and swipes again. He knows all those questions are standard issued by the police. The only reason why they’re not the ones interrogating him now is because the Bench of Judges reserves the right to conduct their own internal investigation if one of their own is accused of anything. Obviously, any and all evidence pertaining to such cases must go through the police to be approved for being used in court.

Bribing the ones looking over it is impossible as it’s sent towards different computer terminals, so different people look over them without knowing who else is. So unless one has the credits to bribe all the 257 police stations across the Biollante Pentagon, each with over one thousand employees, then it’s as secure as it can be.

Not to mention that Mr. Stark so generously provided the police system with their own AI, sensitive to hacking.

“Where were you on the night of the murder?”

“Home.”

“Can anybody verify that?”

Peter falls silent, wrecking his brain for that day and what he did after getting home.

“Matt Murdock. I was in a phone conversation for over an hour with him.”

“Do you remember the time?”

He scrunches up his nose glancing up. “From eight something in the evening to almost ten, I think.”

“Do you consent to having the contents of that phone conversation verified?”

“Yes.”

“Did you meet Norman Osborn previous to the day of his death?”

“Yes.”

“When and why?”

“Two days before. He contacted me to ask about his son’s whereabouts. He said Harry Osborn had been missing for over a week at the time.”

“Did you know where Harry Osborn was?”

Peter shakes his head, and sighs dejectedly. “No. Unfortunately, Harry and I didn’t have any kind of contact for the past seven years—“ Wade nods and prepares to swipe the question away “—until he called me to his office five days ago.”

That has Wade’s head snap up. He frowns.

“Why?”

“He wanted me to be his lawyer, but he wouldn’t disclose any sensitive information about what or who exactly he wanted me to defend. I refused him and left.”

Wade stops the video-recorder.

“Why didn’t you tell me about that?”

“Um, I forgot? It never came up in our conversations?”

“That’s crucial evidence for this case, Peter. Fuck. Can anybody verify that?”

“Only the people working at Oscorp, the desk receptionist — Harry’s appointments agenda, though I believe he kept this one off the record.”

Wade snaps his fingers. “The surveillance cameras inside Oscorp.”

“I think he would have cleaned those thoroughly if he came forward with these accusations.”

They fall silent, then Wade looks at Peter wide-eyed. “The surrounding plaza’s cameras. It’s a public space, he has no access to those.”

Peter ponders that for a second. “And all the recordings are stocked at a random police station each day.”

The smile on Wade’s face dies as he leans back with a sigh.

“Fuck. That’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack.”

“Maybe not. They can have their AI look for the specific recording during the time frame I arrived at Oscorp and then left.” He grins. “But that requires high level clearance.”

Wade groans and lets his head fall back. “Nick fucking Fury.”

Peter snickers. “It’s not me who told him to go fuck a cactus when he tried to recruit you for the gov.”

“Like hell I’ll be their lackey. I’m a professional, not gov’s lapdog.”

“Aw, you poor thing. Did he bruise your professional Alpha ego when he told you that one day you’re gonna need his help?”

Wade growls at Peter, that laser focused gaze making him shiver, until it clicks and his head falls forward with a dull thud (that must’ve hurt) on his forearms.

“ _ Fuck!  _ He’s never gonna let me live it down.”

Peter chuckles and pets his head. “There, there. You just have to Alpha up and then keep your Alpha ego in check if you want him to help you.”

Wade lifts his head a bit to peer up. “You’re having way too much fun right now, and I’m not the one facing jail time if I fail.”

Peter’s eyes soften at that and he caresses Wade’s temple with the back of his fingers. He doesn’t say anything, and Wade pushes up some more, but stays with his head within Peter’s arm’s range.

“What? You’re not gonna tell me that I can do this? Or that you trust me? No reassurance that it’s gonna be okay?”

His eyes roam over Wade’s face. “Do you need that? Do you want me to say it?”

“Not if you don’t mean it,” he grumbles, glancing sideways. “But it’d be nice,” he mumbles.

Peter chuckles. “An Alpha that wants to be coddled. I’m pretty sure you just unlocked the next evolutionary stage in our species.” Wade sends him a dirty look, and Peter just smiles at him like a doe-eyed deer would. Then he lets his hand down because his muscles got tired, and Wade automatically takes it between his. “I don’t know if you realized this, but the fact that I’m this relaxed and chill about this whole thing, when I’m usually anything but, should tell you everything you need to know.”

And Wade — sweet mercy — the cranky Alpha pouts.

“Well, maybe sometimes this coddled Alpha wants to hear you say things instead of expecting me to read between the lines.”

That surprises Peter so much that he needs a bit of time to let that sink in.

“I trust you, Wade,” he says slowly, and their gazes lock.

“Why did you refuse me?” Wade asks, the non-sequitur throwing Peter off-kilter.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because I need another explicit answer from you.”

Peter shakes his hand and tries to take back his hand, but Wade doesn’t let him.

“This and that are two different things.”

“Peter.” It’s firm and clear. “Please.”

If that isn’t playing dirty, then Peter doesn’t know what is. He looks everywhere  _ but  _ at Wade, biting his lip and squeezing his knee with his free hand.

“Because,” — he sighs, choosing to do this even if he’s going to regret it later — “you were— are the first stable relationship I had in  _ years _ and I’m… afraid that if we change the status quo everything will go down in flames and I’d be alone all over again.”

Wade squeezes his hand, a soft look in his eyes. “That doesn’t have to happen to us.”

“But it might. And neither you nor I would be able to stop it.”

“I disagree,” Wade says, and there’s a firmness to his tone of voice that has Peter pressing his lips into a line to not defer to him. “I’m not afraid to fight for what I want. And I want you, Peter.”

He feels his cheeks warm up, something that hasn’t happened to him since his teenage years.

“We have—  _ you _ have a case you need to deal with. We’re gonna talk about this when it’s done.”

Wade stares at him. “You’re just postponing the inevitable, you know that, right? I’m not giving up on you that easily, so if you think that I’m gonna let this go cold and unresolved and move on, you clearly don’t know me. I’ve already made up my mind on who I want as my lifelong mate, and I won’t be easily discouraged from pursuing you. Mark my words, Peter Parker.”

The shiver that quakes beneath Peter’s skin at the driven way he spoke has him pull back his hand and stand up.

“I’ll get your bed linens,” he says as Wade simply sighs, and he flees the kitchen.

 

***

“You smell… funny,” Wade says in the car, assessing Peter up and down.

Peter, for his part, sighs inwardly and looks out of the window.

“I finished my pills yesterday so it’s scent spray for the next three hours.”

“That’s risky.” There’s no inflection in Wade’s voice and that has Peter glance at him.

“I know. Which is why I’ll talk to the judge to have a break at ten to four.”

“What I mean is that they’ll most probably go after your emotional stability, pills or not. If this ex-BFF of yours is worth his salt, he would’ve told Francis all about you by now.” Then, quieter, “I’d go for that, too, if I were that sack of shit.”

Peter closes his eyes and sighs. Of course. He forgot about that small detail that is his shared childhood and teenage years with Harry Osborn.

“Then draw their attention away from that.”

“I’m gonna do that anyway. But Fran-douchebag-cis smells decoys like a snake its prey.”

Snakes don’t smell, Peter thinks, but refrains from commenting.

“Then let’s pray that I’m good at self-control,” he says as he makes a mental list of all the people they can use against him or anything nasty from his shared past with Harry.

Wade huffs. “You’ve a lot of self-control around me. You’re gonna be good.”

Peter smirks and glances at Wade. “What’s that supposed to mean, Wilson?”

The Alpha goes for a nonchalant shrug, but he can’t keep the mirth from his eyes.

“Just saying. With the amount of sex-appeal I’m oozing day in day out, you keep yourself in check pretty well around me.”

Peter huffs a chuckle at that, shaking his head.

“Must be the pills,” he finds himself saying, gazing out of the window as he drums his hands over the armrest.

“So you say I should go off them and test your self-control?”

Peter’s head whips around in a matter of a nanosecond, wide-eyed.

“Your body will still take twelve hours to flush it out,” he mumbles, looking down at Wade’s shiny shoes.

“I could wait it out at your place… if you invite me in.”

Peter rolls his eyes. “Okay, Mr. Vampire, do you want a written invite or would it suffice for me to say it out loud?”

Wade grins. “I was referring to your AI who needs your permission to let people in,” — Peter looks like he just said something he shouldn’t have and that makes Wade’s grin expand — “but I’m glad you accepted my auto-invitation so quickly. Thought I’d have to be more subtle than that.”

“I was joking,” Peter says, but it lacks conviction as he watches buildings and cars pass by.

“Sure you were.”

“I’ll need a ride back home,” Peter says softly.

“My limo is at your disposal.”

“This is a cab.”

“Here we are, Mr. Pool,” the cabbie says as he turns around with a serene expression.

Peter throws a look at Wade, and Wade just shakes his head, makes a cut gesture and then a ‘he’s crazy’ one and Peter’s surprised that the driver doesn’t call him out on that.

“Thank you, Dopinder,” Wade says in that pleasant voice he uses when addressing people he likes, then he turns his attention on Peter. “We still have matters left unresolved, the kind we were supposed to talk about three days ago,” he continues, low, a rumble catching on the last words.

Peter shivers at that because there’s a wall of warmth at his back and hot breath on his neck before he gets out of the car.

“Have a nice day, Mr. Pool.”

Wade bends down so he can look at Dopinder through the open passenger window.

“You, too, Dopinder.”

The trial starts well. Slow, but well. Peter doesn’t even notice when the jitters crawl up his spine and take temporary residence in his stomach. It’s probably because Powers drives a mean case forward and seems to have honey dripping from his tongue when he addresses the jury.

Wade’s hand finds his restless leg and the movement stops as Peter’s buzzing mind crashes to a tomb silence, all his senses zoomed in on that point of contact.

“Relax, Peter. I got you. This is going to be over soon.” He says all of that without taking his eyes off of the prosecution.

“I’d be more relaxed if you started playing on the jury’s emotions,” Peter says between clenched teeth.

“There won’t be a need for that,” he chirps just before he’s up on the floor.

They don’t expect Wade to use the footage from the surveillance cameras that are impossible to retrieve unless there’s a high level clearance involved when he questions Harry Osborn. And Peter doesn’t expect Harry to lose his composure so fast, low murmurs starting behind Peter, but he’s too focused on Wade and how he moves, speaks,  _ smiles,  _ to pay attention to anything else.

“I rest my case, Your Honor,” he concludes.

It’s when he turns back at Peter’s side, now the whole room murmuring to each other, that Peter allows himself to relax and smile at Wade. But Wade’s eyes shift behind them with a frown and Peter follows his gaze only to meet a handful of people measuring him up and down.

Wade growls low in his chest and the men and women who were sizing Peter up avert their eyes as if they looked at a coveted object without asking first. Peter turns an unimpressed stare at Wade.

“Really, Wade? Alpha dominance? You never did that. Is it the high of winning the trial?”

Wade’s laser-focus pins Peter down and he leans in to take a whiff.

“We’re not there yet,” he says, but it sounds absent-minded, like an afterthought. “The Grand Jury still needs to go through the evidence and then make a decision.” He leans back. “Your suppressants wore off.”

Peter’s eyes go wide. “Impossible,” he whispers, then looks at the clock behind the judge. “I still have half an hour until—“

Wade’s tense at his side, breath sounding measured, a false calm. “Your body neutralized them faster. How long have you been using the brand?”

“About half a year,” he mumbles, closing his eyes and making peace with the fact that now he reeks of Omega coming into his scent to every Alpha in the room.

“You should’ve changed it.”

Yeah, he knows. After half a year, the skin gets used to the chemicals and the spray becomes less and less effective with each use, but it’s hard to realize that when he used pills at the same time which are stronger.

“Well, shit,” Peter says.

“I can talk to the judge—“

“No. Won’t be necessary. I don’t go into heat as soon as I’m off the suppressants like other Omega. It takes a while for my body to get with the program, and I usually go off them about three days before my heat is due. I’m just gonna have to endure a half hour of stares burning the back of my head,” he says, miffed.

“I can always—“

Peter lifts a warning finger, before he looks at Wade. “No growling.”

Wade grins and Peter’s eyes fasten on his teeth. The fangs are still normal. When an Omega and an Alpha are off suppressants and share space, usually the Alpha’s fangs grow longer and sharper, just like an Omega’s do. It’s the only outward change they undergo. But Wade’s still on his suppressants, so apart from picking up on a weak Omega scent, he won’t be affected by Peter at all.

Well, unless he counts Wade’s stellar personality and his apparently possessiveness towards Peter. Sometimes he believes that Wade could be on suppressants 24/7 and he’d still act like an Alpha in rut around Peter. Most probably it’s Peter’s fault for allowing him that kind of behavior.

“You realize that that’s like saying ‘no rut’ to an Alpha who’s already half there, right?”

Peter snorts. “I know that you’re more than capable of controlling your growl.”

“Only when I’m not around you.”

“That’s corny even by your standards, Wilson.”

Wade is prepared to retort when the gavel demands their attention.

“This court is adjourned until the Grand Jury will reach a conclusion.”

Suffice to say that Wade stares down everyone who looks Peter’s way for more than a second. He’s walking half a step behind Peter, but he might as well have put a proprietary arm around his shoulders because Peter’s unable not to feel the mass of tensed muscles in motion beside him.

“Are you sure you want me around in your home?” Wade says as they wait for their cab to get out of the line of other flying cars.

Peter glances at him. Wade’s most probably asking that because he knows how territorial Omega nearing their heat can become with their home, and it’s so easy for an Alpha to piss them off. The jury’s still out there on whether the fact that Omega are as strong as Alpha during their heat is a good or a bad thing, but considering that Alpha sometimes forget themselves and become dominating assholes during sex, an Omega needs to protect themselves somehow.

And what better way to do that, than to put a growly Alpha back in his place during heat?

Peter likes being an Omega, and not just because of being able to meet an Alpha on equal footing even at his most vulnerable, but because Alpha are more prone to aggressiveness than Omega even outside of their rut and on their suppressants.

“We still have unresolved issues to discuss and you left the couch unmade,” Peter tells him as he meets his gaze and holds long enough for their cab to pull up.

He knows that once the door of his apartment closes behind them, Wade’s control will crack because he’s been tense since he drew in a breath of Peter’s scent and his Alpha feels safe in Peter’s home, of that he’s more than sure.

“Peter.” It’s weak and whiny and lost.

He looks back at his Alpha, studies his expression, feeling a pang of guilt at making Wade feel so unsure of what he can do now that he’s back in Peter’s home— what he’s  _ allowed  _ to do. He has to give it to Wade: despite looking like he’d like nothing more than to keep Peter glued to himself and bury his nose in his neck until the Alpha scratching at his seams calms down, he still keeps a level head.

“I’m gonna change into comfy clothes,” he says, “and I advise you to do the same. We’ll talk on the couch.”

Wade’s in his lounge pants and a Henley, the clothes he brought over during the pre-trial, when Peter emerges, dressed more or less the same. The couch is made, the bed linens folded and stacked on one end and Wade’s waiting for Peter at the other.

“We need to talk and clear the misunderstanding.” Wade nods, eyes drinking him in. It’s a fight with himself to not get distracted by the dark gaze or the growing need to demand Wade offer him physical comfort. “And I don’t think either of us will be able to keep a cool head if… we’re apart.”

That’s when Wade’s gaze meets his and the Alpha takes a step forward, already breathing hard in anticipation, just as Peter’s already trembling with the mounting need to feel Wade close.

“Promise me,” — he tries, voice shaking slightly, and Wade approaches him slowly — “that you’ll… we’ll talk… without…”

Wade hoists him up by the thighs, Peter’s arms and legs twining at his back almost immediately and they both breathe each other in, Peter whining because there are too many chemicals muting Wade’s scent. But Wade— Wade’s growl antes up and his arms tighten over Peter, nose buried into his neck.

“Wade,” he whines or moans, but he’s pretty sure it’s both.

“I missed you,” Wade growls into his neck and then takes them to the couch.

They don’t talk for the next ten minutes, too busy caressing each other and — in Wade’s case — taking deep whiffs of Peter’s scent. He’s more than miffed that he can’t smell Wade as much as Wade’s smelling him now. And the funny thing is that Peter can’t sense his own smell which means that it’s not potent enough. His system is still busy getting rid of the last remnants of chemicals.

That doesn’t mean that Wade’s nose cannot pick up Peter’s scent even on suppressants. Not when the scent barrier is this weak.

When Wade calms down and his arms relieve the pressure, but still keep Peter close — and by now they’ve slid down, Peter on top of Wade — he thinks it’s time to talk.

“I love you, Peter,” Wade says even as Peter’s mouth starts shaping the first syllable. His eyes fly open from where his head is tucked under Wade’s chin.

“I know,” Peter breathes out. Wade waits. “I guess I should start by saying that I’m sorry for making you feel so miserable these past weeks.”

“That’s never a good start,” Wade says roughly, like he just woke up, and Peter closes his eyes to enjoy it. “It always ends with ‘it’s not you, it’s me’.”

He pushes himself up, forearms bracketing Wade.

“That’s not where I was going,” he says and they stare at each other for a while, before Peter whines and lets his forehead fall on Wade’s chest. “This is so hard.”

Wade hums and continues dragging his hands up and down Peter’s back.

“You’re distracting me,” he mumbles, shivering when Wade’s palms dip under his tee and that calloused skin gets into contact with Peter’s.

“I’m doing my best.”

“The fact is that I don’t want this thing—“

“Relationship.”

Peter glares at him, softened by the fact that those hands feel so good on his skin. “—between us to end. I  _ can _ go on without you, but I don’t want to… I guess I got used to you and your craziness, and I’d live a boring life without it or you.”

Wade smirks. “You need to work on your confessing skills, baby boy.”

Peter shivers, and it’s not because of Wade’s warm hands on his back.

“I knew you were holding something back from me.”

“Hm? What’s that, baby boy?”

“Asshole.” He punches Wade’s arm without real strength behind it and Wade chuckles. “I want to mate you.”

That has Wade’s chuckle die in his throat.

“Are you—“

“You’re not the only one who has a one track mind when he makes up his mind.”

“But you’ve been so against that since the beginning. Why… now? What changed?”

He shrugs, pushing himself into sitting on Wade’s thighs, the Alpha following him up.

“Guess I realized you weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.” He shrugs again. “So I gave up.”

Wade’s studying him. “That sounds a lot like you didn’t have any choice in the matter.”

“I do— have a choice. But it’s hard to follow an old rule when my feelings on the matter have changed since then.”

“Oh.” Pause. “So what are you trying to say?”

Peter rolls his eyes when he sees the poorly-disguised smile.

“I hate you.”

“Close, but not quite. You have two more tries.”

Peter sighs with another roll of his eyes and he gathers Wade close, burying his nose into his neck and then scrunching it up because of the chemicals.

“I love you, Wade Wilson,” he breathes under his ear, letting his lips shape the words on his scarred skin.

Wade chuckles and hugs him tight.

“It took you three years, seven months, two weeks and one day to say it.”

Peter can’t say anything to that as he joins Wade with his chuckles, but when the Alpha moves his head there’s a wet patch on Peter’s neck and he pulls back with a frown only to have his features melt into fondness. He frames Wade’s face and uses his thumbs to dry the tears that are falling.

“We’re so stupid,” Peter whispers with a smile.

“You can’t be stupid, if you’re smart. Come on, baby boy, you finished Law. You know you’re not stupid.”

Peter chuckles as he shakes his head. “In this case I’m stupid and you’re the smart one.”

“If I didn’t already love that brain of yours so much, I’d feel smug.”

They spend the rest of the evening more glued to each other than apart and they fall asleep with Peter on top of Wade. It’s with a crick in his neck that Peter wakes up early the next day and with a desperate need to pee. Wade’s blanket covers them up which he doesn’t remember being there before conking out, but there are more pressing needs than mulling over that, and only when he manages to disentangle himself from the Alpha and stand on wobbly feet does he realize he’s sweaty.

He glances back at a still sleeping Wade with a wilted look. He should’ve known: Alpha heat plus blanket equals a sweaty Omega. And not even in the sexy way. Figures.

He hurries to the bathroom and then takes a long shower because he can, but also because he feels the need to just let the spray melt the kinks in his shoulders and thighs, ignoring the niggling feeling at the back of his head.

It’s only when he gets out and dries himself that he realizes what that feeling is. His body got rid of the last of the chemicals. Now he truly reeks of ripe Omega. He takes on his fluffy red and blue bathrobe and goes into the living room. Wade’s at the island scrolling through pages of articles on the flexi and there’s a mug of coffee waiting near his.

Wade freezes and pushes his nose up, taking a deep breath before a growl rumbles in his chest and his gaze finds Peter in an instant, his whole body, corded muscles straining against the tee, in motion just as fast.

“I stink,” Peter announces as he stops somewhere near the couch.

He feels no fear as he watches the Alpha come to a halt a couple of steps away from him; there’s mostly a growing anticipation twisting in his belly and his eyes fasten over Wade’s neck. His fangs tingle and as he passes the tip of his tongue over them, he realizes they’ve grown. That can only mean one thing. He takes a deep breath and inadvertently takes a step closer to the Alpha.

“You smell…” He’s not sure of what, but that’s definitely Wade’s Alpha smell his sensitive nose is picking up on.

“You smell of adrenaline and challenge,” Wade counters, low and rough and there’s tension building up in his body.

Peter snorts. “At least it’s not fruits and flowers.”

Wade grins, fangs sharper and longer and Peter almost doesn’t stop the whimper from forming in his chest.

“You definitely smell of some fruit or other. And that flower that made you retch back when we first met.”

Peter grimaces as he drags the seam of the bathrobe to one side so that he can smell himself, but he’s startled moments later by the storm of strength that is his Alpha as Wade hoists him up. He yelps and almost topples back if it wasn’t for his arms grappling at Wade’s shoulders.

“Just kidding, baby boy,” he exhales hot, wet air over his neck.

Peter’s breathing hard, both because of Wade’s earlier action and because Peter’s getting really horny, really fast. He’s pretty sure his pupils are blown wide when he gazes down at his Alpha, just as Wade’s are. He grins, sharp fangs pressing over his stretched lower lip.

“You smell like home,” Peter says quietly, eyes tracing the contour of Wade’s lips.

He doesn’t let the Alpha say anything else as he takes Wade’s mouth into a deep kiss that has him moan so wantonly, his cheeks warm up. Wade, on the other hand, is a man of action and he’s moving them somewhere, Peter’s not sure where, because he’s busy battling that wicked tongue and cleaning the taste of coffee from Wade’s mouth.

“Now I know why we never kissed.” Wade’s voice is a rumble as he’s trying to catch his breath when they break apart.

“Because we were just fuck buddies?”

“No, because we’re competitive assholes even when we should enjoy each other.”

Peter grins. “No objection, Your Honor.”

“Now you’re just asking for it.” He dumps Peter unceremoniously on the bed, and Peter’s never been more vocal about this kind of rough treatment in his life. But that’s just because he still wants to be difficult. Part of his charm. “Don’t worry, princess, I’m gonna treat you right.”

“You bet you will!”

“Is that a threat?”

He smirks at Wade, going so far as to push his chin up. “It so is.”

“According to the Alpha Act four hundred thirty-one, addendum eighteen, paragraph six B,” — Peter’s wheezing and Wade’s stopping every so often to breathe and not dissolve into giggles — “a citizen, no matter their social status or dynamic, may not, I repeat, may not, threaten an Alpha as he prepares to officiate the most basic and natural act in the history of humanity.”

Peter’s crying at this point, turned on his side to not choke on his own breath, and Wade buries his nose into his side because he needs an anchor for the laughter that doesn’t give him time to draw in enough oxygen.

“You—” he breathes, “—are hereby forbidden from using laws in bed!”

“But Your Honor,” Wade says, a whine that rumbles against Peter’s newly uncovered skin as they’re both still laughing, “the bed is the best place to use all those laws we crammed into our brains years ago.”

“Your appeal is hereby rejected by the Supreme Court.”

And to imitate the sound of the gavel hitting the block, Peter slaps Wade’s ass. Once.

It’s enough to have Wade freeze for a long moment, which in turn has Peter tense up, not quite worried about what will happened next, but anticipation pools in his stomach. Wade leans back with a smirk that’s not entirely playful and his gaze darkens considerably— just as his cock fills and presses in the V of Peter’s groin.

“Oh, baby boy,” he breathes out, gaze roaming possessively over him, “you’re so on.”

He expects Wade to go for a rough kiss, have him moan and beg the Alpha to fuck him, and fuck him hard, but Wade betrays the expectations, pressing a soft kiss to Peter’s lips. It’s slow and everything Peter doesn’t want right now so he opens up his legs, twining them on Wade’s back, arms pressing his shoulders down to rile him up because Peter’s an impatient little shit and Wade has another think coming if he didn’t already know that after three years of blowing each other.

But Wade’s prepared for this development and Peter growls when he takes his arms and presses his wrists on the pillow above his head. Wade breaks the kiss only to stare Peter down and growl warningly at him until Peter tones it down and whimpers softly.

“We’ll get there, baby boy,” he says into Peter’s neck, taking big gulps of Peter’s aroused scent, tongue laving at the juncture where neck meets shoulder, and Peter moans, leaning his head to one side so that his Alpha can have more access.

Wade growls at this, his hips thrusting minutely into Peter’s groin, creating friction between the material of his pants and Peter’s leaking cock.

“Fuck, your scent, Peter. You’re so ready for me.”

Another big inhale, this time his fangs scraping over the skin in such a way as to have Peter shudder and mewl because it hurts him to have those teeth so close, yet so far from biting.

“Then fuck me already!” he demands and Wade chuckles.

He pulls up, a mischievous smile playing at his lips. “I want to savor you, baby boy.”

But Peter pushes his hips up in such a way as to have Wade’s own snap down of their own accord to chase that delicious friction, and they both moan low and long.

“Fuck now, savor later.”

Peter pants and then does something that knows it will get to Wade’s Alpha: he pushes his chin up, exposing his neck, half-lidded eyes inviting, as is his mouth, lips ajar and tongue peeking out. If his mind wouldn’t have been wading in a sea of arousal and the mouth-watering scent of his Alpha, he would’ve savored the moment Wade’s whole behavior changes from caring, doting Alpha to an Alpha who is two seconds away from knotting his Omega.

That’s basically what happens as Wade frees his cock from his pants and pushes into his lubed up hole in two seconds flat, making Peter keen as the Alpha’s cock, twice as big as he remembers, burns while it stretches Peter’s inner muscles. He feels the ridge of his knot bumping against his hole whenever Wade bottoms out. There’s a growl vibrating underneath his chest as Peter uses one hand to press against the padded headboard and the other one on Wade’s chest, just to feel it under his palm.

It doesn’t take Wade long to lose himself in Peter, his hips delivering powerful thrusts that have Peter shouting unintelligible words and forgetting that the damn bathrobe is still constricting his arms, until Wade takes the arm that’s keeping Peter from hurting his head into the headboard and drags him up until he’s a head taller than Wade and  _ whoa  _ the change in perspective has Peter almost climaxing. Not to mention that now gravity makes him feel Wade’s cock even more than before and isn’t that a major turn on.

Either that or the possessive, hungry look Wade reserves for him right now. He slams Peter into the padded wall and starts fucking him in earnest, the growls twining with his moans, and Peter’s sure he won’t ever hear a more compelling and bone-melting sound than that.

Wade’s so deep into the act, into chasing his own orgasm, into pressing his body and fingertips into Peter’s skin, that he doesn’t warn Peter of the imminent next step. But it’s fine, because Peter’s attuned to Wade so he feels when the Alpha is two thrusts away from knotting him which is when— yes, there it is. He finds Wade’s neck with his eyes closed, sinking his fangs into the meaty part of his shoulder just as Wade does the same and a shudder wrecks through both their bodies at the same time as the Alpha’s knot pushes past Peter’s ring of muscles and they climax.

The rest of the world snaps into the intrinsic knowledge that he mated Wade, something he never thought he’d end up doing, and the sound of their harsh panting now that they both dislodge from each other’s necks.

They look at each other, wonder painting Wade’s scarred features just as Peter feels his face melt into a smile and kissing the corner of Wade’s lips.

“Yes, I’m completely yours,” he breaths into his cheek as he drags the kisses up and then down on Wade’s jaw.

“You’re mine, you’re mine… shit, baby boy, you’re  _ mine.” _

The word ends in a growl as Wade’s arms gather Peter to his chest into a tight hug that also has Peter whimper since it makes Wade’s cock move inside him, more semen spilling. Wade’s growl intensifies and his scent tinges with joy and love and Peter laughs, unable to understand what could have possibly kept him away from this, this whole incredible new world that opens up with a bite.

He jolts when he feels something wet and warm lapping gingerly at the bite mark, but Wade shushes him, arms keeping him securely plastered to his body. A long sigh escapes Peter and he melts at Wade’s ministration, hand caressing the back of his head.

“I’m attuned to your heat cycles,” Wade says out of the blue, in the shower, after his knot lets up.

“What?”

He nods, continuing lathering Peter’s body with the soft sponge. “Spending so much time with an Omega, even one on suppressants, is bound to make an Alpha attuned to them, if they’re compatible. So even if I didn’t smell the heat on you, my body would simply go into rut at the same time as yours entered the cycle. Like clockwork.”

“So we’ve been compatible this whole time and you didn’t tell me?” Peter frowns.

“Erm, no. You’re not turning this on me.” The rumble in his chest makes Peter smile and push his back into it. Wade’s arms sneak underneath Peter’s to clean his front, too. “You were the one,” he says, voice low and vibrating both in his ear and against his back, “who established that this is just a frenemies with benefits relationship.”

Peter opens his mouth to argue, but then thinks better of it and just sends an apologetic look Wade’s way. There’s no shower sex even though Peter shamelessly pushes for it, but Wade just laughs and slaps his ass playfully before he sidesteps him and gets out of the stall.

He pouts, probably looking like a drowned cat. “You’re no fun.”

Wade cocks an eyebrow, big towel covering his hands and all the important frontal parts.

“C’mere, you pouty Omega,” he says, big grin and sharp fangs. “I need to treat the mark before we get any more sexy times in.”

Peter releases a long-suffering sigh, stepping out of the stall. “If you must.”

But Wade pulls him in lightning-fast and kisses Peter like he’s been starving for it, and Peter melts — again — into his arms. Wade’s efficient with the ointment, passing his finger over every single inch on and around the mark. Peter’s just as careful when it’s his turn, but it’s difficult to concentrate when those warm lips cover the unmarked part of his shoulder before passing to gingerly dragging them up and down behind his ear, tickling and making Peter squirm and threaten the Alpha with all kind of things.

“Wade, I’m serious, no sex, if you don’t let me finish here,” Peter warned, stern voice broken only by the huffs he’s trying to contain.

“Mhm,” he says as his nose continues to run up and down the column of his neck, sometimes leaving behind a kiss or two, half-hard cock teasing his own with slow movements.

“Oh, for—!”

It’s as much as he says before he pushes the Alpha into the wall, his own growl matching Wade’s in intensity and warning, and he presses himself into Wade, pressing a bruising kiss and goading  _ his  _ Alpha into taking action. And true to his expectations, Wade doesn’t fail to oblige as he hoists Peter up once again — it is becoming a habit with this infuriating, stubborn, asshole Alpha and Peter loves it to pieces — their cocks coating each other in pre-come.

“I want to make a mess of you,” Peter says, and smells the arousal spiking in Wade’s scent.

Wade grins, sharp and full of fangs. He leans up, lips barely grazing Peter’s even as he’s open in preparation of another rough kiss which Wade is late to deliver.

“I want to make love to you,” he whispers, and Peter’s suddenly grateful that he’s in Wade’s arms because otherwise he’s sure his knees would have failed him by now.

“Fuck,” he breathes out as he presses his forehead to Wade’s, closing his eyes. “I don’t remember you being this intense before.”

Wade nuzzles his nose and then his cheek when Peter smiles and turns his head slightly.

“I’m a private person,” Wade says and Peter chuckles. “But I still want to take you nice and slow against the closet mirror.” Peter chokes on his laughter.

That’s how Peter, still damp from the shower, wet hair sticking in odd directions, finds himself watching his own flushed face and Wade’s cock disappearing behind his balls as his hands and forehead and then cheek leave smudges on the mirror. He almost loses his control when Peter reaches back and squeezes his ass and Wade’s slow thrust falters just before a warning growl has Peter grin cheekily at him through the mirror and Wade narrows down his eyes at Peter.

He should’ve taken that as a warning, because the next thing Peter knows is that his legs are up in the air, Wade’s hands behind his knees, pulling them wider than they were which has Peter stare at Wade in shock. The bastard simply grins and grazes the unblemished flesh of his shoulder just as he suddenly thrusts up.

Peter’s cock is dripping so much that there’s a wet patch on the rug and Peter can’t help but stare at his cock as it trembles slightly and bounces every time Wade pushes in.

“Wade, please,” he pants, the mirror fogging. “Please touch me…”

Although Wade’s panting and grunting behind him, he doesn’t change the torturously slow pace, the thrusts dragging in and out, but going so deep in that Peter’s bones have liquefied by now, which means that he’s unable to drag one arm down to take care of his neglected cock.

“No, baby boy, you’re gonna come untouched.”

Peter whimpers his protest, but Wade doesn’t relent and before he realizes it, his body tenses and he climaxes with a silent cry. He’s panting so hard that he doesn’t hear anything else for a solid minute, but then, warmth and the panting of another’s filter through and he realizes that Wade didn’t come, his cock still pulsing inside Peter.

“You didn’t —“ But his tongue stumbles over the words and he swallows.

Wade chuckles and shakes his head against Peter’s sweaty back. “No, love, gonna need to knot you first. Thought it’d be better to do it in bed.”

Peter just nods and with a grunt Wade returns Peter’s feet on the floor at the same time pulling out, one hand sneaking over his middle to keep him upright when his legs almost give out on him.

They fall on a sprawl of tangled limbs and slow kisses on the bed and considering that Peter had time to recover from his mush state, he pushes Wade on his back without warning, punching the air out of his Alpha. He grins and straddles him, dragging his nose up over Wade’s chest, collarbone, and neck into a long inhale, as he wiggles his ass until Wade’s hardness nestles between his cheeks and then moves his hips up and down in short thrusts.

Wade’s growl pulls a grin out of Peter, knowing that Wade’s letting Peter tease him for the time being, so Peter does, taking advantage of it to the fullest. That is, until Wade overturns Peter and Peter growls playfully at him, biting his lower lip which turns Wade on even more. With a swift and practical use of his Alpha strength, Peter finds himself on his stomach, ass in the air, and he fails to draw in a full breath before Wade’s pushing his cock deep inside Peter’s ass.

He doesn’t stop until his ridge is past Peter’s ring of muscles, and Peter moans, his body lighting up as the tip of Wade’s cock pushes against his prostate. It’s impossible for him to come a third time in such a short amount of time, but it seems that Wade has no qualms trying to make him do just that.

They collapse on the mattress and Wade gathers Peter to his chest, not tight because they still need to catch their breath. It’s five minutes later that they both return to breathing normally and Wade nuzzles into Peter’s damp hair, inhaling Peter’s scent as if he can’t get enough of it.

Well, if he wasn’t with his back to Wade, he’d do the same right now, but there’s a hard cock in his ass which — he moves slightly, which simultaneously makes him moan and has Wade growl lowly and tighten his arms around Peter’s middle — won’t soften as soon as the first one.

“ _ Peter,”  _ Karen jolts him an indeterminate amount of time later just as he was about to doze off since Wade’s knot let up, lulled by his Alpha’s caresses and soft kisses.  _ “Judge Johnson left a message for you and Mr. Wilson.” _

That has Peter turn his head only to have Wade already alert.

“What’s the message?”

“ _ She said that accusations against you didn’t hold and that the Grand Jury declared you innocent based on the evidence.” _

Peter exhales, only now realizing that he’s been holding his breath and Wade presses him even more to his chest — if that is even possible — burying his laughter into Peter’s nape.

“I’m almost sad I don’t get to see you in an orange onesie,” Wade says into his neck, the smile bleeding into his words.

Peter huffs, then grins. “Didn’t you know? Nude is the new black.” And that’s all it takes for the both of them to laugh until they’re wheezing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You're probably wondering why so many tropes? Well that's so I can explain it to you in this end note. The idea came like this: I feel like ABO... with lawyers... but _in space_. The frenemies to lovers happened along the way for some... _inexplicable_ reason.


End file.
